Three Free Thursday Part III: Spicy Meatballs w/ Fragrant Tomato Sauce

Happy Three Free Thursday, Blog Readers! This is the first entry of my new biweekly "Three Free Thursday" blog entries.  On the first Thursday, I will be selecting three free recipes from sources like @RealSimpleFood, @TestKitchen, @WholeFoods, @SeriousEats, @FineCooking and many more recipe outlets on Twitter. Feel free to send in recipe suggestions for Three Free Thursday on Twitter to @RecipEngineer or by e-mail RecipEngineer@gmail.com . On the following Thursday, I'll report back via blog entry the full results of my adventures in the kitchen and let you know if you should try these recipes at home.  Also I'll try to add helpful suggestions of ways to improve the recipes and/or tips to avoid my pitfalls re-creating these recipes.  Here is Part III of the first ever "Three Free Thursday Results" blog entry.  Enjoy!

Recipe: Spicy Meatballs w/ Fragrant Tomato Sauce

Source: @FineCooking

Link: http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/spicy-meatballs-tomato-sauce.aspx

The final Three Free Thursday recipe was predictably made as a last-minute cooking assignment for this blog on a weeknight after a long day of work.  Fortunately, it turned out to be relatively easy recipe for meatballs made in a single skillet for quick cleanup.

The recipe for Savory Meatballs with Fragrant Tomato Sauce reads like a typical chili recipe with cumin, cayenne pepper and cilantro all in the mix. The cilantro, in particular, is a nice deviation from the usual parsley element in traditional meatballs. These meatballs also require no egg to bind them together.  Instead, the recipe uses a paste of bread crumbs and milk to adhere the small meatballs.  Therefore, it is vital to handle these meatballs carefully. A few crumbled meatballs early on cemented the need to avoid jostling them when adding meatballs into the skillet for me.  The meatballs cooked up perfectly as they absorbed the sauce and maintained their moisture.  Many homemade meatballs are over-cooked due to extended bake time in the oven followed by additional stove top re-heating time, but the leftover meatballs re-heated well and the leftover sauce thickened nicely.

Normally, I am a traditionalist when it comes to meatballs.  In my opinion, they belong "on top of spaghetti ... all covered with cheese".  However, I decided to give the recipe's suggestion to serve the meatballs over rice or couscous a fair shot.  I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the meatballs and sauce were perfect over a long-grained brown rice.  The rice soaked up the spicy sauce well and invoked the same comfort food-level of a stuffed pepper dish.

In future iterations of this recipe, I would certainly also experiment with ground turkey, ground chicken and/or the typical meatball mix of ground pork, ground veal and ground beef. I was also struck by the idea of making mini meatloaves from this meatball recipe.  Alas, my procrastination left me with inadequate time to also test a meatloaf recipe for this blog.  Expect future blog updates on this recipe's meatloaf possibilities. 

Findings:

Spicy Meatballs w/ Fragrant Tomato Sauce

The Spicy Meatballs and Fragrant Tomato Sauce was the ideal winter comfort food - perfectly hearty and savory.  Using cumin and cayenne pepper in the meatball recipes gives the dish just enough spice without offending mild taste buds. The Fragrant Tomato Sauce was delicious and truly fragrant, but there wasn't enough sauce to adequate serve with all of the meatballs. Double the sauce recipe and consider adding more chopped onions and/or bell peppers to give the sauce more dimension.


Tips:

• If you do not use fresh bread crumbs to make these meatballs, add an extra tablespoon of milk to soften packaged bread crumbs into the desired paste consistency.
• Double the recipe for the tomato sauce. Remove half of tomato sauce to a saucepan over low heat prior to adding meatballs to the skillet.
• Serve meatballs over rice, couscous or wide egg noodles.
• Freeze meatballs in tomato sauce in air-tight containers for up to three months.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Thanks for reading Part III of this week's Three Free Thursday! Send your recipe suggestions for the next Three Free Thursday by Wednesday, February 2nd.

Follow me on Twitter @RecipEngineer

Three Free Thursday Part II: Chocolate Chickpea Cake

Happy Three Free Thursday, Blog Readers! This is the first entry of my new biweekly "Three Free Thursday" blog entries.  On the first Thursday, I will be selecting three free recipes from sources like @RealSimpleFood, @TestKitchen, @WholeFoods, @SeriousEats, @FineCooking and many more recipe outlets on Twitter. Feel free to send in recipe suggestions for Three Free Thursday on Twitter to @RecipEngineer or by e-mail RecipEngineer@gmail.com . On the following Thursday, I'll report back via blog entry the full results of my adventures in the kitchen and let you know if you should try these recipes at home.  Also I'll try to add helpful suggestions of ways to improve the recipes and/or tips to avoid my pitfalls re-creating these recipes.  Here is Part II of the first ever "Three Free Thursday Results" blog entry.  Enjoy!

Recipe: Chocolate Chickpea Cake

Source: @SeriousEats (requested by @eatingtheweek)

Link: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/01/chocolate-garbanzo-bean-cake-recipe.html

When @eatingtheweek suggested testing the recipe for Chocolate Chickpea Cake, I was both intrigued and terrified.  What kind of person puts chickpeas in a chocolate cake? Would it have a gritty texture? Would a rogue chickpea escape the blender and reveal itself whole when the cake was cut?  Should I have agreed to such a challenge for my first Three Free Thursday blog entry? Will any of my readers trust me again if I actually endorse a chocolate cake made with chickpeas? What have I gotten myself into...



OMC - Oh My Chickpeas!



This recipe requires a blender, a food processor or an immersion blender to puree the chickpeas into the batter.  Using my immersion blender, I agonized over the proper amount of pureeing required to avoid any recognizable chickpea chunks.   Fortunately, the recipe clearly indicates the timing required for each step and I easily prepared the batter without under- or over-blending. The recipe instructs the baker to grease and flour a loaf pan, but surprisingly adds a third step to the traditional process.  After flouring the pan with all-purpose flour, "flour" the pan again with cocoa.  This brillant suggestion prevents the final cake product from having messy white flour streaks and instead leaves the cake with an appealing cocoa dusting.

The entire preparation of this cake batter took less than 15 minutes. It baked for slightly less than hour in a 350* oven and filled my tiny apartment with the delicious aroma of a traditional chocolate cake. The final product was a dense, intensely chocolatey cake with no trace of chickpea flavor or texture. For some taste testers, the chocolate flavor was too intense, but for a chocoholic like myself, it just required an extra-large glass of milk. The inclusion of high fiber, nutrient-filled chickpeas in the batter also gave me the allusion of eating a healthy snack and I admittedly ate it for breakfast the following day.

The recipe suggests sprinkling the cake with confectioners sugar when the cake has cooled completely.  I also experimented with dusting the cake in both cinnamon and cocoa. The perfect combination - an equal mix of confectioners sugar and cinnamon - adds nice contrast to the dense chocolate flavor of the cake.  Fresh whipped cream or a scoop of coffee or vanilla ice cream also pairs nice with this tasty cake.  A final suggestion from the recipe is to refrigerate the cake and re-serve toasted and slathered with butter.  Despite the intense guilt associated with buttering a piece of chocolate cake, it was absolutely delicious and soon I was embracing my inner-Paula Deen. I even confess to spreading raspberry preserves on a slice... or two.

Findings:

This cake is a delightful surprise. I recommend this recipe to everyone to try at least once for its sheer novelty and for the wonderfully baffled looks of family and friends when you attempt to feed them Chocolate Chickpea Cake.  How often do you get such entertainment from a standard cake recipe? You will be hard-pressed to find a taste tester that can blindly identify chickpeas as an ingredient in this cake.  The chickpeas keep the cake moist despite its density and it stores well in the refrigerator. However, it has a short shelf life (maximum three days refrigerated) before the cake's moisture overwhelms it leaving the cake overly dense and gritty. Best to share this cake with lots of friends and family as soon as it cools and save only a piece or two for breakfast the following day.

Tips:

• 

  Chocolate Chickpea Cake!

  Check baking cake with knife or cake tester after approximately 45 minutes baking or when you see cracks in cake start to deepen and widen. 
• Cover tightly with plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator for up to three days.
• Toast lightly to warm cake and serve with a little bit of butter and/or raspberry preserves. 

Rating: 4 out of 5

Thanks for reading Part II of this week's Three Free Thursday! Send your recipe suggestions for the next Three Free Thursday by Wednesday, February 2nd.

Follow me on Twitter @RecipEngineer

Three Free Thursday Part I: Roasted Carrot & Parsnip Soup

Happy Three Free Thursday, Blog Readers! This is the first entry of my new biweekly "Three Free Thursday" blog entries.  On the first Thursday, I will be selecting three free recipes from sources like @RealSimpleFood, @TestKitchen, @WholeFoods, @SeriousEats, @FineCooking and many more recipe outlets on Twitter. Feel free to send in recipe suggestions for Three Free Thursday on Twitter to @RecipEngineer or by e-mail RecipEngineer@gmail.com . On the following Thursday, I'll report back via blog entry the full results of my adventures in the kitchen and let you know if you should try these recipes at home.  Also I'll try to add helpful suggestions of ways to improve the recipes and/or tips to avoid my pitfalls re-creating these recipes.  Here is Part I of the first ever "Three Free Thursday Results" blog entry.  Enjoy!

Recipe: Roasted Carrot & Parsnip Soup

Source: @RealSimpleFood

Link: http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/browse-all-recipes/roasted-carrot-parsnip-soup-10000001664946/index.html



Carrots and parsnips and onions! Oh my!

 When I selected this Roasted Carrot & Parsnip Soup recipe to test, I was excited by the inclusion of parsnips, a root vegetable that I don't cook with regularly. Parsnips are trendy this year with chefs incorporating parsnips in mashed potatoes, roasting parsnips along with the usual winter root vegetables and being fried up as the alternative to french fries. With the spotlight on parsnips, I expected to find gorgeous plump parsnips in every grocery store.  In reality, I went to three grocery stores and finally settled on under-sized mediocre organic parsnips from my local Whole Foods. It was not a promising start to this cooking adventure.

I returned to my kitchen, unimpressive parsnips and a fresh whole-wheat baguette in hand, gathered my other ingredients from the refrigerator and reviewed the recipe. My immediate reaction was to double the recipe.  It goes against everything my stockpot and I believe in to make soup for only four servings.  This soup freezes well, so it's worth making the double batch and freezing any leftovers.  Prepping the vegetables for a double batch took me approximately 15 minutes and while they were roasting in the oven, I set up the olive oil toasts that the recipe recommends for serving with the soup.

Once the vegetables have roasted for approximately 45 minutes, the recipe requires either a blender, food processor or an immersion blender to puree the roasted carrots, parsnips & onions.  I would recommend purchasing an immersion blender to anyone who makes pureed soups (or whipped cream, mixed drinks or smoothies) on a regular basis.  Immersion blenders are relatively affordable and are perfect for pureeing soups because you can simply take the hot soup off the stove top and puree in your stockpot.  No need to cool soup to room temperature or work in messy batches in a blender or food processor.  Also, I find that my immersion blender allows me to better control the consistency of the final product. When blending this soup, you can adjust the amount of water (or cream/milk) that you add to control the thickness of the soup.  I preferred the soup a little thicker, so that you could eat it off the olive oil toasts.

Surprisingly, the recipe doesn't call for cream or milk. In most pureed soups, cream or whole milk is used to keep the soup from separating and add nice creaminess to the final product. Within ten minutes of cooling, the soup made per the recipe separated and carrot-colored liquid began pooling atop my soup. I re-heated the soup over low heat and stirred in 1/2 cup of heavy cream and 1 Tbsp of butter to bring the soup together.  My taste tester and I agreed that adding dairy fats to the soup made a HUGE difference in the final product. While obviously less healthy, the soup did not separate during cooling and was significantly tastier and more visually appealing. Adding cream (or milk) also combated the sweetness of the dish and made it more filling.

Garnish with parsley and a healthy sprinkle of nutmeg.  Quick sidebar -grating whole nutmeg fresh is absolutely worth the effort. It's affordable, available and significantly better tasting and nicer looking than any sprinkle from a standard jar of nutmeg.  Look for whole nutmeg at spice stores, such as Penzey's Spice (my personal favorite spice store - a local store in Arlington, MA and a catalog, containing tasty recipes, which can be requested at http://www.penzeys.com/).

Findings:



Roasted Carrot & Parsnip Soup



This soup has rich color and would be a beautiful starter for any winter meal. However, its natural sweetness can be a little overwhelming.  Adding a bit of cream or butter helps to temper the sweetness of the dish and keep it from separating as it cools. Garnish with nutmeg and olive oil toasts or croutons for a lovely presentation.  The soup stores well in the refrigerator or freezer, so you can easily prep this soup in advance and simply re-heat for dinner guests while baking the olive oil toasts fresh. 

Tips:

• Add cream and/or butter to the recipe to keep soup from separating and add creaminess.
• Freeze leftover soup for up to three months in air-tight container or in quart-sized freezer bags for individual portions.
• Re-heat over low heat and add a small amount of cream or milk and/or a tablespoon of butter to keep soup from separating. 

Rating: 3 out of 5

Thanks for reading Part I of this week's Three Free Thursday! Send your recipe suggestions for the next Three Free Thursday by Wednesday, February 2nd.

Follow me on Twitter @RecipEngineer

Welcome to RecipEngineer!

Welcome to RecipEngineer! As 2011 dawned, I began to construct my "Eleven Exciting Things to Do in 2011" list - a deviation from the standard unrealistic annual resolutions. When I completed the list, more than half my goals and ideas for the year 2011 involved cooking, recipes and food. After years of testing recipes in my tiny Medford kitchen, I realized that it is finally time to share my re-engineered recipes and detailed reviews of recipes and cookbooks with fellow recipe lovers.  I hope that this blog will be a valuable source of information for fellow recipe addicts, as well as for those of you who don't have the time or inclination to page through expensive, bulky cookbooks looking for that elusive perfect recipe.


A little bit about me:

I'm a civil engineer by day and a recipe collector/experimenter/inventor by night. As an engineer, I like all things logical, orderly and on graph paper! I don't improv in the kitchen. When I see an avocado, olives, almonds, a sack of Yukon Gold potatoes and a stick of butter sitting on the counter, I have NO idea what to do with these ingredients. When faced with a challenging list of available ingredients, I hit the cookbooks, internet and Twitter for great recipes to experiment with in my kitchen. I also keep a fully stocked pantry to avoid nightmares such as eating almond-avocado mashed potatoes garnished with olives for dinner.

I'm usually pretty organized ... but my recipes are just out of control! My kitchen counter is filled with cookbooks and binders full of recipes. I hand-write my favorite recipes that I collect (along with helpful notes/revisions) on graph paper because it is neat and orderly (and because clearly I am a total nerd). I'm working to get my all my favorite recipes well-catalogued in a share-able format and I'm always looking for tips how to organizing my ever-growing collection of recipes.

I did not come by my recipe addiction genetically. My paternal grandmother cooked amazing Portuguese food entirely from her memory. One of my biggest regrets is never getting her to write down the incredible recipes for malasadas (Portuguese fried dough), sweet bread, kale soup or her many other delicious home-cooked dishes. There is nothing sadder than not being able to re-create the culinary memories that you associate with a person you love and miss dearly.

 I do most of my cooking in my tiny Medford, MA apartment with limited kitchen gadgets. Occassionally, I venture to the suburbs and invade my parents' huge, beautiful kitchen with its glorious counter space and endless pots and pans, but usually I work surrounded by leaning towers of cookie racks and an overflowing sink full of dishes.  I wish I had impressive culinary school tricks of the trade and industrial kitchen tools, but I make do with great tips from America's Test Kitchen and a cobalt-colored KitchenAid mixer. 

I absolutely DEVOUR free recipes from Twitter. Cookbooks are seriously expensive these days! While I'll be reviewing cookbooks in this blog, I'm also going to review lots of the free recipes from @Real_Simple, @TestKitchen and many, many more from Twitter. Likely you "favorite" these free recipes and despite good intentions never get around to using most of them. I'll let you know which of the hundreds of your "favorite"  free recipes are worth trying at home and which ones should be "unfavorited" immediately.

I'm a local girl ... and I like my ingredients to be local as well.  Born, bred and well-educated in Massachusetts - you won't convince there is a better state in which to live, love and cook. Massachusetts farmers grow some the best apples, cranberries, salad greens, etc. in the world and produce incredible maple syrup. I appreciate that buying local and organic can be pretty expensive, so I try to take advantage of seasonal deals on local ingredients from farm stands and local markets.

I'm a firm believer that cooking should always be collaborative.  There is nothing I like better than being surrounded by friends and family in the kitchen. Nothing makes me angrier than when cooks don't share their secret recipes and ingredients in order reign supreme in their kitchen. Recipes should be shared, not hoarded.  Food is love - spread it around.

 I have other interests ... but it all starts in the kitchen.  I'm a huge sports fan (go Patriots! go Celtics!), but I'm not ready to sit down and enjoy the big game without a table overflowing with good food and drinks for my friends and family. I occassionally knit while something is baking in the oven. I read constantly - particularly Anthony Bourdain books. I adore going to the movies, but bypass the concession stand and sneak in my own handcrafted snacks. I always cook to great music and dance (completely lacking rhythm) around my tiled kitchen floor.  Again, sincere apologies to my downstairs neighbors...


I look forward to getting to know all of you and your favorite recipes. Please leave some feedback below - favorite recipes/cooking war stories/general greetings/etc.  I'll be sharing all of my discoveries and dramas the kitchen and I hope that you'll consider sharing your recipes and your kitchen adventures (and nightmares) with me as well.  Enjoy the blog!

Follow me on Twitter: @RecipEngineer.